Jim Craig, the goaltender for the United States' 1980 "Miracle on
Ice" hockey team, gave opening remarks at the Financial
Planning Association Business and Education meeting on Saturday.
Craig told advisors they shouldn't be afraid to learn new things
to help their clients' dreams come true. Scott Rojas, a financial
adviser at Eclectic Associates, told Investment News his take
away from Craig's speech was that you must be willing to take a
chance and lose in order to be successful.

The aluminum giant is dividing itself into an Upstream company
and a Value-Add company. The Upstream company will be responsible
for pulling the element out of the ground, while the Value-Add
company will focus on creating usable products. "In the last few
years, we have successfully transformed Alcoa to create two
strong value engines that are now ready to pursue their own
distinctive strategic directions," CEO Klaus Kleinfeld said.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump unveiled his
tax plan during a Monday press conference at Trump Tower.
According to Trump, anyone making $25,000 or less ($50,000
jointly) would pay no taxes and instead file a single form
saying, "I win." The plan also calls for reducing taxes to 0%,
10%, 20% and 25% for the highest earners while also vowing to
eliminate the "carried interest" loophole.

The 2015 FA Insight Study of Advisory Firms: People and
Pay is out. According to Financial Planning the results
show, lead advisors have seen pay rise at a compounded annual
growth rate of 2.6% between 2009 and 2015. Median pay for lead
advisors is now just shy of $200,000 per year. Associate advisors
have been a little less fortunate. The report, obtained by
Financial Planning, says the average associate advisor makes
about $80,000 per year and has seen a 2% compounded annual growth
rate over the past seven years. Chief Operating Officers have
seen their median pay grow at 7% annually since 2009, more than
doubling lead advisor pay growth. Finally, officer managers have
seen an annual boost of 3.9% to about $60,000 per year, the data
shows.

The debate over passive and active management is unlikely to be
settled anytime soon. However, two money managers told Financial
Advisor active management can be useful, especially during
periods of heightened volatility. Ed Keon, managing director and
portfolio manager at QMA, told Financial Advisor his firm is
shedding risk by rebalancing into a neutral portfolio after using
a 60% stocks/40% bonds split. Meanwhile, Brian Aherns, executive
vice president and director of the Strategic Investment Research
Group at Prudential, says bonds look attractive at these levels
after the Fed kept its benchmark rate on the zero bound in
September. "We are using indexes or structured equity products to
build a portfolio now, and then we will use active managers
around that whether it is a bull or bear market," Aherns told
Financial Advisor.